Divided by Elsie Chapman

contract. My guess is the Board chose not to publish photos or videos this time because his mistake was made out of goodwill—to someone in the Surround, yes, but it’s obvious there was no true intent to harm Kersh.
    I move to stand next to Chord, wondering what he’s reading behind the words on the screen, ones I can’t see, having never gone on tour myself. His tone was uncertain, as if he wasn’t sure what to say.
    “No, you never mentioned that,” I say.
    “Usually we just walked back and forth along the Kersh side of the barrier, from one end of our sector to the next,” he begins. “Just … walking, gun in hand, scope with the other in case we needed to take a closer look at anything in the Belt or the Surround just beyond it. Once, when I was close to finishing my tour—it must have been about three weeks in—the Surround set off a series of flares.” Chord finally looks at me. “Remember the last time we saw flares on Fireton Street?”
    The name takes me back to that run-down house where Luc died. But now it’s also where Chord had his first tour. East side of Jethro, just off Fireton, BPS24J.
    “Fireton.” I say it out loud, try to normalize it, make it nothing. Julis would be proud of me, I think. “I remember, yes.”
    “It was like that, but brighter, since I was so much closer this time. I pushed my way through these crazy kaiberry bushes that had grown as tall as my shoulder, and this huge tree, all silvery and really kind of beautiful—the only one I’ve ever seen like that, I still don’t know what kind of tree it was—to get even closer to the barrier to watch. There was a clear path through the Belt on the other side. Short, but still clear enough to pretend I wasn’t staring directly into the Surround. If I blurred my eyes the right way, it was just this perfect, open path.” His bemused smile makes me feel sad. “Baer would’ve kicked my ass if he were there, seeing how distracted I was,” Chord says.
    “How close did you get to the barrier? Chord, the electricity …”
    “I didn’t touch it … at first.”
    My heart leapt in fear. “Chord.” It’s not unheard of for cleaning to find the occasional body out there, sometimes actual incompletes but more often than not a careless active or idle blackened to a crisp. Get too close to the barrier and you risk getting charred to death. There’re signs up along the barrier, all along its circumference— remember the barrier is charged do not touch thank you the board —but no one in Kersh needs to be reminded. It’s a part of life, just like knowing that all restaurants have both a complete and an idle menu from which to order.
    “Well, I got close enough that I should have smelled something burning, and I don’t mean the smoke from the flares, either,” Chord says. “I mean, I know how strong the barrier’s currents are. But there was nothing, and that was wrong.
    “Then I realized what I had in my pocket. I’d left it in there from the day before. It was a new piece I was playing with, trying for a new kind of key-code disrupter. Like the one I made for you when you were active.”
    I think of the cool, smooth strip, made of mesh and wire. How I’d hold it against my palm to break open locks of houses. “Why would you want to make another one?”
    “Why did Luc and I ever make any of the crap we made?” He shrugs. “Just because we could.”
    The memory of how they’d claim victory with each new contraption, even if no one else could understand the purpose of it or showed much more than a passing interest. “Okay, that’s true.”
    “So this new key-code disrupter was in my pocket, and I think it was reading something inside of me— using it—that let it temporarily neutralize the barrier’s charge.”
    “Using something inside of you? What do you mean?”
    “Whatever’s left of my Alt code inside my head. The spent shell of it, I guess you could say. And the dead code would be the bullet,